He noted Foxwoods is also building an outlet center mall. 'We knew it wouldn't last forever,' Butler said of Connecticut's lock on the market. It is now pursuing casinos in areas including Massachusetts and the U.S. Mashantucket Pequot chairman Rodney Butler said if not for the 2008 downturn that dried up funding, it would have a presence by now in markets including San Diego and Philadelphia. Mohegan Sun once dominated the region's gaming market along with the neighboring Foxwoods Resort Casino, owned by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, and both tribes moved to expand years ago in anticipation of the competition that now has arrived in force.

For tribes that can pull it off, it's a way to diversify and protect against losses as the casino boom cuts into profits at individual properties. The Mohegans, who opened their flagship Mohegan Sun casino on tribal land in 1996, are among a small number of American Indian tribes - and perhaps the most ambitious - to put their gaming expertise to work at commercial casinos outside their reservations. 'If you just were to stay here, you would not have an increasing amount of revenue.' 'We have to take care of their tribe membership and the benefits they are able to get, and they are not shrinking,' said Mitchell Etess, CEO of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. Under a strategy that began before the downturn hit Connecticut's Mohegan Sun, one of the world's biggest casinos, the tribe's gaming company is running casinos in Pennsylvania and Atlantic City, N.J., and pursuing more projects in states including Washington, New York, and Massachusetts.

A gaming slump is eating into the profits of Mohegan Sun, but the 2,000 tribal members who draw benefits from the massive casino aren't feeling the pinch - not with money coming in from a burgeoning Mohegan Tribe gaming empire.

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